As the healthcare sector turns to new-age technologies to streamline workflow, improve efficiency, cope with the ever-growing demand for healthcare services, and enhance patient outcomes, the industry has increasingly become one of the prime targets of modern cyber-breaches.
From community health facilities like Memorial Hospital and Manor in Georgia to the largest healthcare providers, compromises in business emails and ransomware attacks are causing significant disruptions to daily healthcare services in the United States, resulting in losses worth millions for each case.
While the cybersecurity budget has increased significantly to help fend off cyber breaches, a report released by the Ponemon Institute earlier this month showed that the increasing budget is not yet at the level sufficient to help protect critical healthcare systems from malicious actors.
Georgia Hospital Loses EHR Following a Ransomware Attack
On Sunday, Memorial Hospital and Manor announced to followers through a Facebook post that its EHR system had been hit by a ransomware attack, slowing down care delivery. According to the healthcare organization, team members discovered the ransomware attack on Sunday after they encountered multiple virus protection warnings.
As a result, the hospital resorted to the paper-based process, resulting in slow healthcare delivery to patients. While there are no details about the cyber breach on the company’s website, the Bainbridge-based hospital assured its followers that it was evaluating the event and working to restore the access to its EHR.
Other Reported Cyberattack Events
In other unrelated cases, Kaiser, a leading health system in California, also announced on Friday it discovered a breach in its health information system on September 3, with the attackers accessing vital patient data, including their first and last names, dates of birth, medical record numbers and more.
Similar data breaches also affected lab services at Summit Pathology, allowing malicious actors to access critical data for over 1.8 million patients, according to the notice published on the company’s website.
Cyberattack incidents can cripple critical healthcare systems such as Electronic Health Records (HER), Information systems, payment systems, and many other vital systems, leading to a loss of a massive amount of critical patient data and service disruption.
With modern healthcare systems largely interconnected, an attack on one system can allow hackers to access multiple systems. This underscores the need for the healthcare sector to invest more in cybersecurity to ensure the safety of patient data and avoid service disruptions.
